Saturday, July 25, 1998

Staying cool at all costs worthly

By Rheta Grimsley Johnson

I read once that Ted Turner has no air conditioner in his Florida mansion. I applauded his rare courage, then went and stood smack in front of my window unit, letting the artificial cool part my hair and numb my ears.

Writer Bailey White recently told a radio interviewer that she has no air conditioner in her South Georgia home. Instead she relies on desk fans and goes to a lot of movies in the summertime.

That's what it takes to be a real writer, I thought when I heard: eccentric ways. Then I went and put my back to the air conditioner, waiting for chill bumps to rise on my neck.

When I was younger I swore that my own house would have no noisy box stuck in the place where an open window should be. Who needs a machine blasting frigid air? I would have high ceilings to compensate, and waltz through life to the soft whir of ceiling fans. The night sounds of the frogs and owls and coyotes would never be drowned out for the sake of staying November cool in July.

That was some years ago, before I grew old and accustomed to comfort. Now I think I'd grow hungry, eat only dried beans and Spam, wear Dumpster clothes, before I'd give up the luxury of air conditioning.

Each birthday I set the thermostat lower. By the time I'm 80, I'll be living in a meat locker in Juneau.

This month when the power bill comes, I may have to consider a second mortgage and the dried-bean diet. If August is worse than July, Ted and Bailey may move in here.

It's all in what you get used to, of course. Most of my growing-up years certainly unwound in an un-air-conditioned world.

Being cool was a novelty. Our house didn't have air conditioning. None of our friends' homes did. My grandparents never had it. The schoolhouse was hot. As was the Buick.

The corner Rexall had air. We'd go there and hang out amongst the pills, greeting cards and Whitman Samplers, thinking of excuses to linger.

The white coolness and the pharmacist's talking bird were equally big attractions.

But a girl can't stay in a drugstore forever. I'd get on my bike, pedal home through humidity thick as peanut butter and find a cool spot under a tree in the yard. On the rare times when it was too hot to sleep at night, we put wet washrags on our foreheads. Mostly, though, nobody noticed we were living in an oven.

I was in high school when we finally got a unit. The entire family stood there, watching the manufacturer's pink plastic ribbons ripple in the breeze, not believing our good luck.

Things changed after that. My father stayed on a rampage about open closets, open cabinet doors, cracked windows. He didn't want to waste the cool. When you came in or went out of a door, you didn't dawdle. You flew or else you'd hear the command from somewhere in the house, "Hurry up. Shut the door."

It was as if suddenly we had a captive Siberian tiger living inside, desperate to get out. There were strict rules about which interior doors stayed open, which remained closed. The all-important routing of the air from the living room box took priority over privacy, that's for sure.

It was during this period, the Early Air-Conditioning Adaptation Period, that I decided never to own one. I would live as one with nature.

I did all right for a few years. But then something in me snapped. I wanted to sleep beneath quilts in August. I deserted the ranks of mavericks who make it fine in this world without air conditioning. I am now, and shall remain, undeniably cool.

King Features Syndicate